Class attendance monitoring can be done in several ways. Athlete Attend focuses on remote monitoring through smart devices in order to insure that athletes do in fact attend class.
Class attendance has a proven positive correlation with graduation in collegiate athletes. The University of Georgia has seen extreme improvements in graduation rate by sport since class attendance monitoring was put into place in 2005. For instance, the football's teams graduation rate improve from 41% to over 81%.
Class attendance monitoring, or class checking, is the act of ensuring that an athlete goes to class, shows up on time and remains for the duration of the class. This task is done by students hired by the athletic association and managed by the academic staff of the institution. The students stand outside of each classroom 15 minutes before class starts and remain 15 minutes into class. They have a clipboard with a sign in sheet that each student-athlete must sign as he/she enters the classroom. If a student is late or leaves early, the class checker may make a note of how late the student-athlete was or when he/she left. At the end of the class or when the class checker's duties are complete for a given class the checker logs into the student-athlete academic website and plugs in the attendance.
It is the class checker's responsibility to keep up with each day's sign in sheet and then turn them in every 2 weeks in order to be paid.
This system brings up several issues. First and foremost, class checkers are paid for a full hour for only 30 minutes of actual work. But that is just the start of the problems. The athletes and class checkers both find ways around the system such as, for example:                a. Athletes leave after the checker leaves        b. Athletes sign each other into class        c. Athletes arrive before the checker and then are marked absent        d. Checkers do not go to class and just mark every athlete as present        e. Checkers never mark star players absent        f. Checkers make deals with the athletes        
Another major problem is the punishment for missing a class. Student-athletes are suspended from competition if they miss a certain number of classes. But academic staff have a very hard time bringing the punishment to fruition because coaches never trust the checkers. They always believe the athlete. Unfortunately athletes are not always trust worthy so there is a constant battle between the academic staff and the coaching staff.
The problem is with the evidence, or lack thereof. There are so many ways around the system that it is extremely hard for the academic staff to prove an athlete's lack of attendance. The athletes know this and use it to their advantage. While graduation rates have improved dramatically, by solving this issue the rates can be improved even further.